Taking God to court: Job’s deconstruction and resistance of dominant ideology

ABSTRACT

Using poststructural criticism, we explore how the book of Job deconstructs the deed/consequence nexus that stands at the core of the Hebrew Bible’s theological framework – i.e. the doctrine of reward and punishment. Building on both Derridean deconstruction and Foucauldian resistance, we show that the book of Job refuses to comply with the opposite binary of reward and punishment. First, we demonstrate how the friends in their speeches enforce the binary and, thereby, exercise power over Job. Secondly, we consider Job’s resistance and deconstruction of this binary through both his lived experience and desire to argue with God. Finally, we argue how Job’s desire to argue with God challenges God to defend themself in court. In God’s answer, however, one is introduced to a different God than as portrayed by Job’s friends. Moreover, God’s boastful reply, which lacks any justification for Job’s suffering, makes God appear fragile and weak. As such, this article argues that the book of Job may not merely deconstruct dominant ideology, but also God itself.

KEYWORDS:

• Book of Job
• poststructural criticism
• deconstruction
• resistance
• retributive justice
• deed/consequence nexus

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Wolfers, Deep Things Out of Darkness, 13.

2. e.g., Clines, ‘‘Deconstructing the Book of Job,’’ pp. 106–23; Hankins, The Book of Job and the Immanent Genesis of Transcendence; Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do; Lacocque, ‘The Deconstruction of Job’s Fundamentalism,” 83.

3. e.g., Dell, The Book of Job as Sceptical Literature; Mettinger, ‘‘Intertextuality: Allusion and Vertical Context in Some Job Passages,’’ 258–280; Janzen, Job, 12–13; Crenshaw, Reading Job; Kynes, My Psalm Has Turned into Weeping.

4. Koosed, “Nine Reflections on the Book: Poststructuralism and the Hebrew Bible,’’ 502.

5. See, Clines, “Deconstructing the Book of Job,’’ 5.

6. Derrida, Positions, 41.

7. Derrida, Limited Inc, 93.

8. Derrida, Positions, 41.

9. Derrida and Bass, Margins of Philosophy, 329.

10. Aichele et al., “Poststructuralist Criticism,” 120.

11. Derrida, Positions, 41.

12. Derrida, ‘Force of Law: “Mystical Foundation of Authority’’’, 26. This is the third of three aporiae that Derrida distinguishes regarding the unstable relation between law and justice.

13. Ibid., 26–27.

14. Lawlor, “Deconstruction”, 126–27.

15. Derrida, ‘Force of Law: “Mystical Foundation of Authority”’, 26.

16. See, Derrida, Resistances of Psychoanalysis.

17. Derrida and Bass, Writing and Difference, 354.

18. Aichele et al., “Poststructuralist Criticism,” 129.

19. Ibid., 121.

20. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 27.

21. Howarth, Poststructuralism and After: Structure, Subjectivity, and Power, 192.

22. Foucault, “The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom,’’ 12.

23. We are greatly indebted to Barnett’s analysis of Foucauldian resistance here. See, Barnett, “The Primacy of Resistance: Anarchism, Foucault, and the Art of Not Being Governed” 268–96.

24. Howarth, Poststructuralism and After, 192–93.

25. Foucault, “My Body, This Paper, This Fire,” 9–28. In this article, Foucault criticises Derrida for his text-centred deconstruction and argues there are relations of power at play outside the textual activity.

26. Hirst, “Derrida and Political Resistance: The Radical Potential of Deconstruction,’’ 19.

27. See, Dell, The Book of Job as Sceptical Literature; Greenstein, “Parody as a Challenge to Tradition: The Use of Deuteronomy 32 in the Book of Job,” 66–78; Seow, Job 1–21: Interpretation and Commentary 82–84; and Meshel, ‘Whose Job Is This? Dramatic Irony and double entendre in the Book of Job,’ 47–75.

28. The phenomenon that every voice counts can be seen from the book’s structure and literary framework as it contains several competing voices. See, Stordalen, “Dialogue and Dialogism in the Book of Job,” 18–37; Newsom, The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations, 29–30; Hyun, Job the Unfinalizable: A Bakhtinian Reading of Job 1–11.

29. See, Hoffman, “The Relation Between the Prologue and the Speech-Cycles in Job,’’ 160–70.

30. Seow remarks, ‘‘The speech is well-crafted. Some might even say it is “crafty.’’ Seow, Job 1–21, 381.

31. See for example, Dell, The Book of Job, 35–39; Dhorme, A Commentary on The Book of Job, lxx; Habel, The Book of Job: A Commentary, 53; Clines, Job 1–20, 205–9.

32. Dell, The Book of Job, 35–36.

33. See, van Loon, “But Man is Born to Trouble … : Metaphors in the Discussion on Hope and Consolation in Job 3–31,” 80–81.

34. See, Schmid, “Innerbiblische Exegese und Schriftkritik im Hiobbuch,” 247–8.

35. See Seow, Job 1–21, 381; Hartley, The Book of Job, 103; Gordis, The Book of Job: Commentary, New Translation and Special Studies, 46.

36. Habel, Book of Job, 118.

37. Unless otherwise indicated, the translation of the verses from the book of Job is taken from: Greenstein, Job: A New Translation.

38. For a discussion on how Eliphaz harshly criticises Job, even when he uses seemingly positive words, see Fullerton, “Double Entendre in the First Speech of Eliphaz,” 320–374.

39. Habel, Book of Job, 137.

40. For a detailed study on the theme of knowledge in the book of Job, see, Shackelford, “The Concept of Knowledge in the Book of Job.”

41. Kant, “On the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy,” 33.

42. Kant., 33.

43. Newsom, The Book of Job, 168.

44. Foucault, “The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom,’’ 12.

45. See, Clines, “Deconstructing the Book of Job”.

46. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 95.

47. The in-between, or third space, is a term often coined by poststructuralists. More specifically, found in feminist, queer, cultural and postcolonial theory – both offsprings from poststructuralism. For example, drawing from Derrida’s concept of différance, Homi Bhabba developed ‘‘third space theory” in cultural and postcolonial studies. See, Bhabba, The Location of Culture. And Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa,’’ 875–93, who relates the ‘in-between’ space to the binary of gender.

48. Derrida, Positions, 40–44.

49. Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, 230.

50. Balentine, Job, 208

51. See Seow, Job 1–21, 543–4.

52. Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” 794.

53. Žižek, For They Know not what they do, li.

54. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 95.

55. Howarth, Poststructuralism and After, 192.

56. Foucault, ‘‘Sex, Power and the Politics of Identity,’’ 167.

57. See, Derrida, ‘Force of Law: “Mystical Foundation of Authority”’.

58. Caputo, Hermeneutics: Facts and Interpretation in the Age of Information, 194.

59. John Caputo, Hermeneutics: Facts and Interpretation in the Age of Information, 315.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ilse Swart

Ilse Swart is currently working on her PhD at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam in New Testament studies. In her PhD, she investigates the expectation of an alternative and imminent future as envisioned by Paul of Tarsus through the lenses of prefigurative politics and queer theory.

Yasir Saleem

Yasir Saleem is a university assistant (PhD candidate) in Old Testament studies at the Faculty of Protestant Theology of the University of Vienna. His dissertation project focuses on intertextuality between the book of Job and the Priestly tradition in the Pentateuch.